1. Pour the cold tea (minus tea-leaves) over the mixed fruit and sugar and leave to soak overnight (or a minimum of 4 hours).

2. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 3 (325F/170C)

3. Mix in the beaten egg and add sieved flour and spices. If the mixture seems a bit dry, you can always add orange juice. And if you're feeling fancy, you can also chuck in some apricots (dried or tinned), glace cherries or nuts of your choice to the mixture before cooking.

4. When you're done mixing, spoon the mixture in a greased loaf tin and cook for about 1 hour. You’ll know it’s ready when you pop a skewer into centre of loaf and it comes out clean.

5. Leave to cool on a wire rack and then eat sliced by itself or with butter.

So come Sunday, not only will your kitchen smell wonderful but your all important tea guest will think you're a natural domestic god/goddess.

It's been all hands on deck this week at fruit towers as we counted our little socks off to see if we could reach our target of half a million hats. Having all hands on deck was pretty useless really. The only decking we have is outside, and all the hats were inside. And there's not much decking anyway, and rather a lot of hands in fruit towers, so it was pretty cramped. It's also been raining these last few days.

But we soon realised the error of our ways and got back inside to continue the count.

This picture of our expert hat unpacker Jake is for illustrative purposes only. We'd like to asssure you that our unpacking method was far more thorough and exact than this. Which is why, at 6.09pm Grenwich Mean Time yesterday evening, when we totalled up all of our unpacking, we can reveal with absolute accuracy that we cruised beyond our target of half a million hats (we're currently on 501, 423 - and still counting).

Now, if we were American, this would likely be cause for some serious high fives, a few chest bumps and plenty of butt slaps. But we're not American. We're British. And we didn't quite know how to celebrate. So I climbed into a perspex box and got covered in hats. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

And made me rather happy.

In fact, we're all rather happy here at fruit towers. 501, 423 hats really is a staggering amount. And we're so, so grateful for your incredible knitting efforts. So, for anyone who has knitted a hat, wherever you may be, please stand up now and take a bow. You've been amazing. And we love you all (or if there's more than one of you, why not try a little chest bump action?).

We'd also like to say that although we often showcase the more creative hats we've received here on our blog, please don't think that we're not just as impressed by all the other hats. We know that each and every one is a labour of love, and we're in awe of them all.

At the end of the day, every single hat we receive means 50p for Age Concern, and that's the main thing.

There's still a few packages to be unpacked here in the office, so we'd best get back to it. Think we'll all be quite sad when there's none left to unpack. It's been like Christmas every day these past few weeks...

And don't forget people, the hats will be on shelf in Sainsbury's stores around the country from 5th November, and they do tend to be snapped up pretty quickly, so get yourself down there pronto to avoid disappointment. And in doing so you'll be helping us raise £250,000 for Age Concern to help keep older people warm this winter.

Bedding plants. Gardening gloves. A sunny afternoon. A trowel. And a flask of hot tea.

Just the perfect components for a spot of bi-annual bedding action.

Earlier this week, some of the ladies (and Oli) from Fruit Towers popped down to Holland Park to volunteer their green fingers to help plant the thousands of plants and bulbs that need planting now so as to be ready for spring.

Everyone got stuck in with their trowels though planting in a straight line is apparently not as easy as it looks.

Despite a few wiggly rows of golden yellows, things looked much neater when they left.

The team at Holland Park are always keen for a hand with gardening, so if you fancy getting involved, just drop Head Gardener Marcus a line here

October 20, 2008

It's a ram and it's covered in wool. But it's also a hat made of wool. It's really very layered indeed. Are those a honking set of mutton chops we see? Or are they horns? Is it cruel to call a ram's sideburns mutton chops? It probably is. How can we make it up to you fine ram - if we make you hat of the week will you stop staring at us so intensely with that big old left eye of yours? Probably not, but we're going to make you hat of the week anyway, on account of the fact you've been beautifully knitted. Tidy needlework Pat Rawcliffe - you sure know how to knit a good ram.

Jonathan M and his children sent us some photos of how they've taken recycling our kids' packaging to a whole other level by providing housing for their pet gerbils.

Jumper and Digger moved in to their new house last week and having settled in comfortably, are now waiting to hear back on planning permission to install a wheel to run round in and some sort of water feature.

October 15, 2008

And when it comes to making our smoothies, we like to make sure you're getting the best value for your hard earned money. So we conducted a little experiment the other week to check we're doing just that.